Welcome to The Week in Tech, your roundup of the latest top tech news. This week, we have over £63m in UK tech funding, WeWork’s mammoth $500m raise, Facebook’s positive Q2 results and much more.
The firm, which has created a cash allocation software solution and was founded in 2008, will use the funds to expand across Europe and the US and to double the size of its team.
Existing investors Eleven Two Capital, The Vertical Group, and SwiftKey’s Jon Reynolds also participated in the round.
B-Secur’s £3.5m
Belfast-based B-Secur raised £3.5m in funding from a syndicate of investors including Accelerated Digital Ventures (DAV) and Kernel Capital.
B-Secur, which has patented a series of biometric solutions, uses an individual’s heartbeat to provide authentication.
The company is currently active in the UK, US and Ireland.
Limejump’s £3m
Limejump, a London-based firm which is using big data and machine learning tools to disrupt the energy utility market, received £3m in Series A funding.
The round was led by Statkraft Ventures and drew participation from existing backers Passion Capital and the Angel CoFund.
Business and energy secretary Greg Clark launched the first phase of the investment worth £45m.
The Faraday Challenge funding programme is part of the government’s Industrial Strategy and will deliver a coordinated programme of competitions with the aim of boosting battery technology R&D in the UK.
WeWork raises $500m for China expansion
Office-sharing startup WeWork has raised a whopping $500m (£380m) to fuel its expansion in China.
The new cash comes from investors including Chinese private equity firm Hony Capital, Japanese internet giant SoftBank, Greenland Holdings and China Oceanwide.
The social network achieved 17% year-over-year user growth, with 66% of its 2.01 billion users visiting the site every day.
Download of the week
Our download of the week is Cool Cousin. This app is home to communities of locals in cities across the globe who share information about their favourite bars, restaurants and other neighbourhood hotspots.
Users can choose to follow their preferred contributors, or ‘cousins’, and see their favourite spots marked on a map.
And finally
The prevalence of contactless bank cards has made paying for goods easier than ever, but for some people nothing is ever enough.
Microchipped employees will be able to pay for food and drink in the company’s break room, open doors, login to computers and use the photocopying machine.
That’s all for this week’s episode. For more tp tech news, make sure you follow us on Twitter and Facebook, plus subscribe to our newsletter.